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Investigators pursue the architect of a brutal kidnapping, exposing an obsessive plot amid marijuana legalization's dawn.

Compelling doco about a brutal crime/criminal

Well made docu that doesn't outstay it's welcome

Among the Best in True Crime Documentaries

It was an excellent documentary but not perfect.

I find true crime documentaries that lay out the crime from inception through to trial fascinating &amp; Wicked Game: Devil in the Desert is compelling viewing. While the actual crime, with its brutal &amp; cruel details, is very difficult to digest the way they exposed the mastermind of the crime in all his psychopathic glory was riveting &amp; horrifying in equal measure. The doco is separated out into three episodes- the first focussing on the crime itself, the second the hunt for the perpetrators &amp; the final episode showing the trial of the main mastermind. Hossein Nayeri, the main suspect &amp; eventual criminal lifer, was shown through his past, his relationship &amp; his role in this crime to be an egotistical grandiose wholly manipulative man who would stop at nothing to achieve his end goal - whatever that may be. In this case it was to take down a more successful man who he believed was holding vast sums of cash. The fact his assumption could be wrong was never considered while he &amp; his henchmen metered out the most horrific torture on their victim. Once Nayeri was caught, charged &amp; was awaiting trial the contrasting views described by his legal team versus the evidence &amp; perspective of the DAs couldn&#39;t have been more opposing. In listening to his lawyer/s you would think the man had a heart of gold, not a violent bone in his body &amp; was so deeply misunderstood but then came the trial...
There is a strong general opinion that accused should not take the stand during their own trial but given Nayeri&#39;s arrogance it was no surprise that he chose to do so. Perhaps he wished he hadn&#39;t after facing expert career DA Matt Murphy, who is the kind of passionate but cool head you want trying a criminal case. Nayeri&#39;s true colours were revealed &amp; although this wasn&#39;t the singlular moment when his fate was sealed it was certainly the final nail in his legal coffin.

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Wicked Game: Devil in the Desert

A fascinating, well edited, often shocking docu that moves at a lick and doesn&#39;t outstay it&#39;s welcome with just three episodes. The perp here is a bonafide psychopath who neatly checks off all of Robert Hare&#39;s checklist. Watching him talk is quite chilling, seeing his cold, poker-face demeanor and claims of innocence, alongside the TikTok footage of his rampant narcissism. I&#39;m glad the journalist wasn&#39;t sympathetic to his manipulations. I wish there had been more focus on the main victim. I fully appreciate keeping his anonymity, and we hear his narration of the details of the crime itself. But it would have been useful to hear more about how it&#39;s affected his life. The surfing DA dude deserves a spinoff series of his own, I&#39;d love to read an autobiography of that guy.

I&#39;m a fan of a good true crime documentary, and this is one of the best I&#39;ve seen. The crime itself makes it a worthy story, but the criminal, the surrounding story and cast of characters, including DA Matt Murphy who describes it as a case unlike any of the other hundreds he&#39;s tried, well...there&#39;s just no way to not get sucked in. The 3-part series is perfectly paced. Not a dull moment. While this starts with a brutal crime, there&#39;s just SO much more to this story; twists, turns, surprises and told by so many people with their own unique piece to share. It almost seems unreal. This could easily be a scripted movie - if not for the fact that it DID really happen!

I was made familiar with this Michael Simonian story ever since ABC 20/20 episode called &quot;Catch Me if You Can&quot; that aired early in the pandemic in March 2020. It was absolutely shocking and captivating and certainly the most riveting 20/20 episode that I&#39;ve seen. It was a 37 min, 52 sec condensed Youtube episode from the 80-min episode on their website. This Wicked Game: The Devil in the Desert released 5 years later is even longer than the full version of Catch Me if You Can because Hulu gave them money running at 2 hour. It covers more details, more analysis, more of everything. Additionally, I read Ryan Peters book &quot;Left&quot; which I highly recommend. The book really puts in the vantage point of detective Ryan Peters and shares the captivating experiences of everyone involved from the victims to the suspects to the detectives and prosecutor. Wicked Game which was broken into 3 parts runs chronologically and really goes into detail about the lives of the victims and suspects prior to and after the incident in the desert. It is so incredibly well put in terms of direction and production value. There is never really a dull moment. My only critique with this documentary are two-fold: (1) They hardly covered Kyle Handley, the bastard friend of Michael Simonian, who ultimately betrayed him by telling the monster, Hossein Nayeri that Michael was swimming in money right after Michael generously took him out to Vegas and paid for everything. If this is how Kyle treats his friends, he doesn&#39;t need enemies. Without Kyle furnishing this information to Hossein, the kidnappings, torture and mutilation would have never happened. Yet, Wicked Game hardly covered Kyle and focused entirely on Hossein. This was a 3-man effort but Wicked Game makes it sound like it was only Hossein. And I suspect because it was Hossein&#39;s idea entirely to commit the gruesome mutilation which is what turns this from a local story to a national story. They probably also had far more court footage of Hossein so it felt obvious for them to target Hossein in this documentary. Also, I suspect that Kyle was not interested in interviews with Wicked Game unlike Hossein who never saw a camera he didn&#39;t like. I wish they covered Kyle Handley far more but he is as ghost in this documentary as the 3rd criminal, Ryan Kevorkian. My other major critique was why Wicked Game felt the need to include interviews from both Marina Teinert and Salvatore Ciulla, Hossein&#39;s defense attorney. They were in this documentary to do nothing but serve Hossein and make him look like a saint. They repeatedly lied through their teeth because you can&#39;t bash a former client. I don&#39;t even know how Hossein could afford these private attorneys, I was expecting him to be assigned a public defender. Marina was particularly egregious, typical corporate lawyer who lies for a living. She was very critical of Hossein&#39;s ex girlfriend, Cortney Shegerian calling her &quot;self-serving&quot; when Marina was only in this documentary to serve Hossein. For example, she insinuated to us that Hossein still loved Cortney despite she claiming to us that he didn&#39;t respond to that question. I really do hate this woman. She is so obnoxiously cheerful in defending a man who cut off another man&#39;s penis. I don&#39;t believe Marina is brainwashed by Hossein. She&#39;s far too intelligent for that as a defense attorney but I do believe she is that prototypical lawyer who will portray the Devil as a saint. There was no reason to have any of her statements in this documentary and it just seems like it was there to stretch the documentary to 2 hours. The same could be said with Salvatore though he wasn&#39;t as egregious. Having these two defense attorneys in this film just muddied the waters. When you have a huge bias and there is an ongoing appeal, Hossein will be spoken as a euphemism by his attorneys. They aren&#39;t going to bash him after the trial and get disbarred. Most lawyers don&#39;t care whether or not their client actually committed the heinous crime, they don&#39;t even want to know. They will treat every client as if he&#39;s completely innocent which makes sense. This is why you cannot interview them and expect to get any level of honesty. I would gasp everytime I hear Marina talk because I knew nonsense was coming out of her mouth. TLDR: Overall, it was still a 10/10 documentary minus the lack of coverage on Kyle Handley and the inclusion of defense attorneys interviews. And I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in nonfiction crime stories.

User reviews

Wicked Game: Devil in the Desert

Compelling doco about a brutal crime/criminal

Well made docu that doesn't outstay it's welcome

Among the Best in True Crime Documentaries

It was an excellent documentary but not perfect.

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